Record-Low UT Ticket Demand for Red River Rivalry

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Texas Longhorns VS. Oklahoma Sooners

Texas Longhorns fans have their finger on the panic button heading into Saturday’s Red River Shootout game against Oklahoma. But what might be even more of a long shot than beating the Sooners this weekend for the UT faithful is trying to resell their tickets for face value.

The annual Texas-Oklahoma rivalry game is played at the Cotton Bowl on the Texas state fairgrounds in Dallas, with fans split 50-50 right down the middle of the stadium. Based on SeatGeek data, ticket prices on the Texas side are nearly 40 percent cheaper than on the Oklahoma side, by far the largest gap we’ve seen between the two since 2010. For the first time, some Texas tickets are actually selling for less than face value ($110) on the secondary market.

In the GIF below, you can see a heat map of the Cotton Bowl showing how ticket prices for this game have shifted year-over-year since 2010.

Here are some more numbers that tell the tale of hard times in Austin:

Texas Longhorn Ticket Stats

The average ticket price on Oklahoma’s side of the stadium ($331) has outstripped that on Texas’ side ($209) by $122, by far the largest gap we’ve seen in the last four years of this rivalry. In fact, over the last three years there had not been a difference of more than $53 per ticket between the average resale prices on the two sides of the stadium.

The seven-day average ticket price for Texas-OU on Texas’ side of the stadium has fallen 53 percent since the Longhorns’ season began, from $354 the day of their opening loss at BYU to $168 yesterday. The cumulative average ticket price of $209 on the UT side is also the lowest in the last four years, down 24 percent from last season ($275).

Some Longhorns tickets at the Cotton Bowl have sold for as little as $80 per ticket and are available now starting at $99, while the cheapest seat available on the Sooners’ side of the stadium is $133. For less than $133, you can purchase a ticket in 15 different sections on Texas’ side, including four sections in the lower bowl.

The market for Longhorns tickets as a whole is also suffering. Demand for tickets to UT home games has dropped 38 percent since the team lost at BYU on September 7. Tickets had been selling at a seven-day average of $144 each the day of the BYU game, and that figure fell every day for the next two weeks — helped along by a home loss to Ole Miss — to a low of $58 the day of the Kansas State game. The market has recovered to a degree after wins over Kansas State and Iowa State to a seven-day average ticket price of $90,but that’s still nowhere near pre-BYU levels.

Based on secondary market activity before its first game of the season, Texas had the 10th-highest average resale price in all of college football at $125 per ticket. Since then, however, the Longhorns rank 17th in the nation at $95 per ticket.